To Care
by A Pen and a Piece of Mind
Summary: While in the hospital, Cas suffers a bad hallucination while Meg struggles to understand what's changing between them. Originally I posted this on Tumblr.


Yeah so I know I have other things in the works and I've been gone for a while from this site, but I'm getting back into the swing of writing actual stories and I posted this on Tumblr a little while ago. Anyway, here's a one shot that I may have a sequel for. We'll see.

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_**To Care**_

This isn't the first time he's lost himself in the Hell of his mind. It's not the first time she's had to calm him even when he can't hear her. This is nothing new for either of them.

He doesn't scream. Always silently suffering, taking on the pain and penance his father preached absolutely.

Meg isn't there when it starts. But, when the lights begin to flicker, the demon knows the angel suffers and she walks to his door from the nurse's station.

It's all the same, another night, another hallucination, but something's different. She knows he needs him and the heart in her meat suit beats a little faster. She feels it, but ignores it, because it's just the stupid girl from Cheboygan getting all dewy and not the dark, twisted soul creating it. She needs to kill Crowley, that's why she's here; she can't get all hung up on human emotions that don't belong to her.

He lays in bed, as Lucifer forces him to relive the war in heaven and his acts as God. It's not the truth of his actions that Lucifer shows Castiel. He makes it worse. He makes Castiel burn the Earth, destroy humanity and unleash Hell. Over and over he sees the blood and ashes, smells the fire, tastes the death and decay.

It's become a routine since they arrived a month ago. Lucifer haunts him and he takes it. Then, she comes to him and does what she's been told to do. She cares for him. And in the morning they'll play board games and walk the grounds while he mutters about nonsense as she listens.

He doesn't hear as she opens his door and walks inside. He can only hear the screams and Lucifer's laughter. The lights flicker faster and the sound of pressure on the glass of his window meets Meg's ears. This one is worse than the others.

"Clarence if that window breaks I am not cleaning it," She laments as she pulls a chair beside his bed. He remains still and can't hear as she reminds him, "It's not real."

A new vision plagues his already damaged mind. He stands atop a building, watching his destruction, when he hears her call him, "Clarence." He turns to see her, black eyed, angel blade in hand, coldly staring him down.

And he's split in two. One of him is frozen to the side, calling her name, watching his thorny caretaker fighting the expressionless, calculating, Angel of the Lord who became God. It's the first time he watches himself kill her. It's the first time he screams.

Meg backs away as the bulb explodes and the entire hospital is cast in a blackout. He sits up and continues shouting as his eyes remain closed tight while his hands cover his head to block out whatever he's just seen.

"Castiel." She doesn't know what to do. He won't respond to sedatives, but someone's going to come soon, a doctor or a nurse and she can't explain away a raging angel. She can see his grace threatening to burst through his vessel as agony tears him apart. She's afraid to touch him, worried he might smite her while he's lost in his vision.

A spider-web of cracks forms along the glass of the window. Despite her fear, she reaches for him. He has to stop and there's nothing else she can do.

"Stop. Cas, stop!" She grabs him by the shoulders and sits on the bed, holding him, covering his mouth to stop him from crying out. It's harsh and a bit awkward but she could care less about what it looks like so long as he stops. One of his hands grabs her arm and for a second she worries, but it's not an act of violence, it's a tether, a grip on reality that he needs to come back.

"I know the hospital sucks but we don't need to destroy it. Calm down."

In her arms he relaxes, his hand firmly holding onto his caretaker. She continues to talk to him, calling him feathers and Clarence as the tension in his body subsides and his free arm lowers from his head. She removes her hand from his mouth as he comes back to the world. His hand drops from her arm in one fluid motion while her own relax though they do not let go.

There is a hum as the electricity turns back on, the emergency lights serving as a substitute for the shattered light bulb whose remains litter the floor.

She is hyper aware of the fact that he has leaned into her embrace, but she makes no move to end it. When he opens his eyes, he looks up at her like she's the most beautiful thing in the world. For a moment, she wants to lean in and press her lips to his. Feel the burn of the light as it cuts through the darkness, cleaning her soul. Start a fire between them and tear the room apart as the crushing power of Heaven and the unholy torment of Hell threaten to destroy each other in the most physical way possible. She knows she can't want him. Not in the romantic way she's seen in movies, because she doesn't feel, she hasn't for a while.

She lets him go and climbs off the bed as fast as she can while he stares at her.

"Well, feathers, next time we should do that without the screaming, or better yet, a different kind of screaming," She tries to flirt in the nonchalant way she's used to, but it comes out awkward, different, and she frowns at her own words because they don't seem right.

She looks at the broken light bulb and sighs. She'll need to replace it, probably ask for the window to be repaired too, but they are menial concerns compared to the blue eyes staring through to the tattered soul beneath the meat suit. The demon that tortured and killed without care. The face so distorted and twisted no one who could see it would be able to look for more than a second. But he can, and he does.

"Do you want to play that card game again…poker, that's what it was called, right?" He asks quietly. She rolls her eyes, but nods, and the smile that crosses his face is so damn happy, it does something to her that she isn't quite sure how to put into words. And as she thinks about the routine and how in the morning they'll walk near the flowers while he talks about bees she realizes what it is. A feeling, a human emotion from some far off time, something she shouldn't have, but it's there. Something she can't remember the name of. It isn't love that much she's sure of, but it makes her heart beat a little faster as she looks at the Angel sitting at the edge of his bed, a deck of cards in his hands.

She understands that she's changing, that she cares, but it's wrong and she shouldn't. And it frightens her.

"Tomorrow, I have to do something…" She's gone before he can respond and he is disappointed just as much as he is excited at the possibility of tomorrow. He remains on his bed as he watches the door, waiting for her to return.

_Daydream that the world stands still.  
Dancing through the fibers of time.  
Baby, I just want to hold  
Something that was never meant to be mine._

_I look to heaven to save me,_  
_And you call me naive._  
_Gravity a hopeless lover_  
_Cursed with disbelief_. – Type Three - Anberlin


End file.
